Silver and Gray
by Kuroya
Summary: Ed centric, angsty drabble. One shot. silver and gray and pure, leaving you breathless..


_xxxxxxxxxxxx _

"...And the rain, it raineth ev'ry day."  
_-Feste, "Twelfth Night"_

SILVER AND GRAY (_by Kuroya_) ((Written: 4/21/05 Published: 6/09/05))

Silver and gray.

It hurts to look up, but you do anyway. The rain trickles through your hair, across your face, dripping from limp fingertips to reach the soiled cement below. It continues to fall, cold and fast and hard, silver and gray and pure, leaving you breathless.

It makes an unnatural sort of noise as it drums against your automail arm, and you can't help but flinch, because that's what you are- unnatural.

If you could look down, you would have done so by now, because the rain has washed away your tears, and now you just feel empty. It hurts, but in a far-off kind of way, as if it's not really you that's hurting, but someone else. The rainwater tastes like saline on your tongue.

You can't remember the last time it ever rained like this. It seems to you that the rain is no natural phenomenon, but tears of the sky. It doesn't seem right.

Silver and gray.

They must be looking for you by now, but you don't care. You could stay out here forever and melt with the rain, collapsing into yourself until there is nothing left. That sounds good, but try as you might, you can't dissolve into the dismal colors of the clouds and the rain. You can't make yourself disappear.

It rushes down all around you, but there's a strange sort of roaring in your ears and you can't really hear at all. Not that it would make any difference; the sound itself is gray, as if making it some other color would clash terribly with the spring storm.

Spring. It doesn't feel like spring, not to you. It feels like winter, silver and gray, colorless and cold and empty. But then, to you it's always winter. You've long since stopped waiting for the seasons to change, because no matter how much you want them to the flowers aren't going to bloom and you're not going to be reborn.

Your knees buckle without warning, and you find yourself in a heap on the ground, a washed-out and withering excuse for a state alchemist. At least you've stopped watching the sky; your eyes are turned towards the puddles now- dark, almost black, reflecting gray. You let out a startled cry as you meet your own reflection, and stagger backwards, just closing your eyes because it's safer that way.

Nothing is safer than emptiness.

And then you laugh, gasping and crying and laughing all at once. It doesn't sound quite sane, but you can't remember the last time you _felt_ sane, so it's okay. Besides, the sound is muted by the rain and no one will hear it because you're alone.

Laughter. Reminds you of... Of... Can't remember, your mind is all fuzzy, dimmed by the roars of sound and the tapestry of gray that surrounds you. It doesn't bother you. You don't care.

You wonder, as you often do, why everything went so wrong. Not that it matters. Wondering won't change anything.

So you stop, just letting yourself drown, trying to breathe through the proverbial knife that's somehow lodged itself in your throat. Makes it hard to laugh.

Insanity. Silver and gray. Maybe you'll just never go back, just stay here forever without moving, just rust into the concrete and be washed away with morning's tide. Become frozen flotsam to drain away, to drown, to be smothered by the weight of the sky and its choking downpour. You don't care, as long as it won't hurt anymore.

"Brother?" A voice through the darkness, no you don't want to go back, you want to let yourself rust and bleed and scream. From somewhere far away, you realize that you have stopped laughing, which is good because you might be drowning.

"Brother? Are you okay?" Metal on your good arm, metal like your automail, wet and cold and you can't help but flinch away, gasping for air.

"We were worried about you. Come back with me, okay?"

No, not okay, it doesn't really matter but you're so tired that you could just float here forever, on these silvers and these grays, staring up at the sky-

"Are you okay? Can you hear me?"

Take a deep breath of rainwater without choking, get the knife out of your throat, pull yourself back down from the sky, doesn't hurt so much once you're used to it. You sit up, manage to turn your head to look at him. You're soaked and you're shivering but you don't care, and there's a note of despair in your voice when you finally speak.

"Yeah, Al... I'm fine." And you smile, but it's the kind of smile that hurts to look at, the kind of smile like you're about to cry. Doesn't matter, not really, you'll drown eventually anyway because you always do...

"Good... Let's go back, then." He helps you up, and you erase the pain, replacing it with emptiness, because there's nothing safer than nothing itself.

You stand on unsteady limbs and he leads the way, which is good because everything's blurry and faded. It's all the same color to you, all empty and dismal. Not that it makes any difference. There's nothing safer than inside your mind, nothing safer than insanity.

In the midst of silvers and grays, you return obediently to your prison, smiling slightly as the door locks behind you.

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx _

_xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx _


End file.
